I met some incredibly nice people from Joost last week, and met some different incredibly nice people from Network2.tv last month, so I decided I’d try both services and compare.

Drumroll please …… at the very early days, I think that Network2.tv is slightly better.

I can use my web-browser to watch network2, and start full screen video (where it exists, see the demo on the home page), which is ace – whereas with Joost I have to use their client. The Joost client is pretty funky, but shipping your own tools loses points on the ‘it just works’ front.
network2 doesn’t use p2p so I’m not using my bandwidth to send tv to people I don’t know. The full-screen video seemed less jerky on my 8Mbit DSL Max using network2 than it did on Joost (probably because it’s not using p2p!).

From a usability POV, Joost has a concept of channels which doesn’t seem right when not associated with a broadcast ‘many viewers, one stream’ system. Using RSS and web standards makes network2 make more sense when watching stuff on a computer.

I don’t actually want to watch tv that’s delivered over today’s consumer IP products. I don’t see whats wrong with broadcast being used, especially as you can tie broadcast into a PVR (like Sky+) inexpensively, and timeshift television around your life.